


Birth of The Engineer

by AndallitsGlory



Series: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do [2]
Category: Midnighter (Comics)
Genre: Angie has dreams, Apollo continues to have no self respect, F/F, I love Habib so he's in this chapter, M/M, Shen cannot believe her life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-27
Updated: 2016-04-27
Packaged: 2018-06-04 19:11:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6671674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndallitsGlory/pseuds/AndallitsGlory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Angie Spica is tired of being a normal human among her superpowered friends. Now that the shiftship called The Carrier has given her the tools, she can become something more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birth of The Engineer

**Author's Note:**

> This happens after Midnighter #7, hence why Andrew is miserable af. Seriously, Midnighter, how do you fuck with your soul mate like that? Sending a picture of yourself as a kid is maybe the worst apology I've ever seen in my life.

The moment Angie decided that she was going to do it was when Andrew came to meet her for a drink. He had flown, of course, and she watched his feet touch down oh-so-lightly onto the pavement, a testament to the rest of his flawless composition.

He had taken her flying once and she had found it so hard to breathe up there while the winds beat her exposed skin raw. Tears, snot, and brevity distorted her view of downtown Manhattan and the Brooklyn Bridge at night, with Andrew soon insisting on bringing her back down to where the regular humans belonged. Still, in those priceless few moments with the winking lights and ants milling between their steel titans, her blood had turned to ecstasy.

The bar where they met, called “Ella” after the owner’s wife, had a classy, almost romantic atmosphere. Votive candles lined up in a neat row across the polished wooden countertop, like ladies in waiting. The cocktail list came with names like “Serenity” and “Moonlight Breeze” and included ingredients like pear nectar and angostura bitters. Angie ignored it for her regular gin and lemon. Andrew ordered something with vodka and cucumber.

They nursed their drinks and didn’t speak for an unusually long time. Angie was wired to the point of full-body vibration, imagining what it would feel like to take off into the air on her own terms. Andrew—no Apollo, wasn’t he—once said that he would take her to the Grand Canyon. She had teased him back, saying it was the sweetest lie a man had ever told her. “‘When have I ever lied to you?’” he asked, cocking his head. Maybe instead they would go together.

For over a year, she had worked on an enormous metaphysical ship. 50 miles long, 35 miles wide—yeah, that level of enormous. Her colleagues knew that around 6 months ago, the ship had told her its name, The Carrier. They didn’t know that before that The Carrier had given her an encoded message. She, the ship, told Angie that it was a gift for a special friend.

Angie had decrypted the code an hour ago and discovered how special, indeed, it was. So special, it scared her. If she went through with this thing, it would crack open her whole world, giving her a whole yolk of new potential she couldn’t predict. She would, perhaps, no longer even be herself once done.

“Are you okay?” Apollo asked as she pushed her drink to the side. She should’ve asked that question first. These last few months, he had perked up and returned to his old self. Mentions of Midnighter per conversation dropped from dozens to a few. But tonight he seemed to have relapsed into pensiveness, the wrinkles in his forehead going deep.

“Not feeling up to drinking tonight,” she said. The procedure she would undergo dealt with her blood. 

His eyes widened and the wrinkles deepened further. “So you’re dying.”

She shoved him on the shoulder. “You know I’d sooner drink myself to death before letting anything else get me.” She then veered away from the subject of herself, “So how did your date go?”

Apollo had, thank god, decided to dip his toes back into the dating pool not so long ago. Shen had taken this as cue to go hunting and returned with a number of prospects, including acquaintances and acquaintances-of-acquaintances. Angie was pretty sure the guy Apollo met up with last night came from Grindr, though.

The sky blue of his eyes blinked at her, confused. Then, he said, “Oh. Right. He was fine.”

She scowled, reconsidering her decision to not drink. What would it take to get her friend out of his slump for good and move on? “That is the least exciting thing I’ve ever heard.”

“I think he liked me,” he said, as if men didn’t always like him. As if men didn’t always flock to him whenever they went on a night out and struggle against each other for his attention. Shen called these men Apollo’s sunflowers for the way their heads turned as he walked across a room. While Apollo pretended he didn’t notice most of the attention, Shen reveled in the looks and touches she got from women. Not lately, though. She and that girl from Singapore seemed to be getting pretty serious. “Honestly, I don’t remember most of the night.”

“For superheroes, isn’t that a possible sign of a villain messing with your head?”

“It’s not a villain messing with my head,” he said, so low under his breath that she almost didn’t catch it. He waved the bartender over for another round. Angie’s heart sank and she put her arms over the bar and leaned over them with a sigh. Even when his problems were so normal, she felt it beyond her to fix them.

It will be better after tonight, she told herself. After tonight, she would be able to join Apollo and Shen on their weekly flying excursions. She would never miss their nights out on the town in Tokyo or São Paulo. She would complain with them about criminals and evildoers and stupid ex-super boyfriends and girlfriends who treat them like dirt. They would make a permanent threesome. Life would be amazing.

***

“Oh my god, Angie, what did you do?”

Agony had subsumed her, contorting her body into impossible positions. Through the film of tears, she could only see the same ceiling tile. For awhile, she had believed that the ceiling tile was all that she knew, that she, too, was one with it. That she had only ever existed as an inanimate object, her screaming caught behind eternally sealed lips. Her blood burned as it passed through her veins and her heart pounded, fighting to survive through the mercury. 

Her limbs cramped as her bones melted and her muscles degraded into elastic. She wanted to pull herself tight into a little ball, become a thrumming mass of death. But they splayed, then twisted, then splayed again. Her limbs no longer belonged to her, they belonged to the blood, to the fire that set all of her alight.

She didn’t feel Apollo taking her into his lap. Didn’t even know he was there until he pinched her chin between his fingers and turned her face toward his. The teary film thickened. Her dear friend. She was so sorry she had done this, so sorry. All she ever wanted was to be like you…

“Shen, get a doctor,” Apollo said and a rustle of wings behind him went out the apartment door. He sounded so far away; the music of her own heartbeat filled her ears and she felt that if she stopped listening, it would end the song. “Angie, please hang on. Be strong for me, okay?”

He doubled, tripled in her vision like a multiplying ghost. Her older sisters made her watch a ghost movie once. The ghosts lived under the beds and in the closets and behind the mirrors of this old house and would sneak out to chase the family through the halls at night and yank their souls from their bodies. For weeks, she stayed up to watch for them, sobbing to placate their rage. It must’ve worked as the ghosts never came for her. But she had stopped crying for too long.

“I’m back! I’m back, let him look at her.”

“…This is who you brought? Shen, he’s a child!”

“Apollo, we don’t have time for this! Let go of her!”

“No, I said bring a doctor! This isn’t a doctor, this is a teenager!”

“Hi. I’m Habib,” a young stranger’s voice came from the disembodied space. Angie couldn’t see Apollo’s face anymore, nor the ceiling tile. Spots of black mushroomed over her sight. “Actually, I am The Doctor. I am very qualified.”

“Says who, your high school biology teacher?”

“Apollo, for God’s sake, let Habib look at her!”

“She’s going to die, Shen!” Apollo said and Angie wondered, was she? Did death come so slowly? It seemed unfairly cruel.

A pair of warm hands broke through her pain, setting two spots of relief on her chest and soothing her heart. Angie shuddered, then wept. Her heaving cries layered like lyrics over the bass of her chest. 

“Your friend is wrong,” said the young voice, cutting through cloth. “You are not going to die.”

_You’re going to save me._

“No, you do not need to be saved. I am merely going to make this whole process of yours easier to bear. Take the deepest breath you can, Angie. I am going to turn you over now.” 

A bucket was pushed in front of her and her head lifted to position her mouth over its maw. Waves churned in her stomach, building to a storm. This happened to her usually after a bar, so drunk she didn’t care that she pushed her own limits. She should have welcomed this, but instead the thought of becoming separated from any part of herself jarred her like the threat of death. Panicking, she tried pulling herself away, but Habib’s grip kept her locked in place. _No,_ she begged him, _no, no, no, no…_

Habib pressed his fingers to her abdomen and as blood rushed up her throat, all she could think was that she didn’t want to go back to normal…


End file.
